John Oliver Plays Drunk, Lecherous British Professor on "Community"

Published at 1:23 PM EDT on Sep 2, 2010 | Updated at 2:42 PM EDT on May 30, 2012

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You can't say John Oliver isn't game for sending up his own British-ness as he continues to branch out in his Hollywood gigs. The "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" go-to correspondent is in Los Angeles this week shooting a guest spot on the NBC hit "Community."

"I'm a drunk, lecherous, British professor," he tells PopcornBiz with unabashed pride.

Naturally, the next question would be if he'll be rocking the iconic tweed jacket with patch along with a pipe to go for the full Oxford professor look.

"I don't have a pipe, but I do have a tweed jacket with a patch," he says. "I might bring that on the set tomorrow and say, 'I'm going to do this now.'"

Next, we'll see hear Oliver as the voice of Vanity Smurf in the "Smurfs" movie where he's part of killer cast that includes Katy Perry, Hank Azaria, George Lopez and Alan Cummings.

But there's no drunkenness or lechery in this part. "It's jut good LSD-inspired Belgian cartoons," he says.

Oliver downplayed his own role. "I read some lines into a microphone and now they'll have 18 months of intense animation around it," he says. "That's the extent of my involvement."

But why Oliver, who by all appearances skips the hair portion of the make-up chair on "Daily Show" every night, playing Vanity Smurf ? After all, this is character who "looks at himself in the mirror all the time." he says. "That's basically it."

Blame it on the accent again. "I think (the filmmakers) were thinking, how do you embody vanity?" says Oliver. "And I think they thought the British accent is the most conceited, self-centered sound. So I think that's what it's about."